A collaborative work environment can include computer and communications hardware and software configured to execute and manage collaborative communications among organizationally- or work-related people. One example of a collaborative environment includes a web portal through which people communicate with others in an enterprise. The amount of information created and used in collaborative environments is continually growing. Managing this information has become an enormous challenge for environment administrators or owners of collaborative environments.
There presently exists a wide variety of collaborative tools that leverage collaborative work in a portal environment such as Discussions, Feedback, Comments, Chat, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), Urgent Requests (a collaborative application in which a questioner can ask for solutions to a problem, and in which a guaranteed response time can be provided), Web Logs, etc. These different information blocks are typically entered in a collaborative system without much integration support by the system itself. Any cross-relation between the blocks is detected only by chance, and information seldom leaves the compartment of the system in which it is created.
Another problem is that collaborative information is often unconnected to experts of the topic covered by the information. Information such as found in discussion groups is usually monitored by so-called “moderators,” who may or may not be experts on a particular topic, but there presently is no mechanism to find out whether similar discussion threads are running in parallel. And, as long as existing experts are not invited by a moderator, their knowledge may be lost for the group.